New Workspace "Lab Cambridge" Will Help Artists and Scientists Collaborate

Shilpa Gupta and Mahzarin Banji’s “While I Sleep,” on the theme of fear, at Le Laboratoire. (photograph by Marc Domage)

As we have discussed before, art and science have an undeniable connection. Many wonders of the world being explored in labs double as beautiful visuals. It's this phenomena that is being explored in a new exhibition opening next year in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lab Cambridge will provide a collaborative space in which scientists and artists will create works. The project is basically an American version of Le Laboratoire in Paris. Both the American and Paris versions of the exhibition were created by Harvard professor and active entrepreneur David Edwards. He will teach his Ivy League class at Lab Cambridge, which will be located in D.C.'s Kendall Square.

“Kendall Square is near such a big scientific community with MIT and Harvard and all the biotech firms," said Carrie Fitzsimmons, executive director of ArtScience Labs and director of Lab Cambridge. "But mostly no one know what’s going on inside these laboratories, and what we’re trying to do is open up this space for an open dialogue.”

To get a sense of what to expect from the project, the Paris center has presented works such as “The Olfactive Project” in which artists and scientist try to create an electronic version of coffee that can be sent anywhere. The center also hosted Cira Najle’s “Cummulus” installation that displayed clouds and emphasized notions of atmosphere and water in the air we breathe.